Voices from Gaza

Until the war, I lived with my husband and our nine children in the Tel a-Za’tar neighborhood in Jabalya Refugee Camp. But after October 7, the camp became a war zone. There were bombings and bodies everywhere. Families were bombed inside their homes, children, old people and women. UNRWA schools that were turned into IDP camps were also bombed. The Israeli army ordered us to move to places that were supposed to be safe and then bombed them. Here, in the northern Gaza Strip, nowhere is safe anymore.

[the] soldiers ordered us on loudspeakers to go out to the street. They ordered the men to stand facing the wall and forced us to strip down to our underwear. There were almost 300 of us there, naked. They forced us to kneel and tied our hands and feet with zip ties. They kept us like that for four hours, cursing us and our mothers all the time. They beat us on our heads and other parts of our body with their guns, and kicked us in the face with their military boots. The kicking made me bleed.

When I got to the hospital, I heard them saying ‘Shiba in Tel Hashomer.’ A vascular doctor came and told me: “Your leg needs to be amputated. We need to consult an orthopedist.” The soldiers laughed and made fun of me: “Cut off his leg [...] When the orthopedist came and examined me, he told me: “You have to choose: Your leg or your life. It’s your choice.” It was the hardest decision I ever had to make.

I went into our tent and discovered everyone who was in it had been hurt or killed. My three sisters, Afnan, 16, Shaimaa, 15, Duha, 13, my brother Mahmoud, 16, and my cousin Mahmoud, 19, who tried to call an ambulance earlier - they were all killed. My uncle’s wife was hurt in the leg and her son, Ahmad, 15, was hurt in the right thigh. It was a horrifying scene. It was all I could do to hold it together and not break down there. I couldn’t take care of the wounded because I was afraid they’d shell us again. I had to just abandon them.

My son Yusef had a curtain wrapped around his neck. He started choking, and I helped him get it off so he could breathe. Karim, Alaa's son, was next to me. His head was covered in blood and he was unconscious. I tried to wake him up. My phone was on me, so I called my mother-in-law and told her the house had been bombed and that we were under the rubble. I wasn’t injured, thank God. I called out to Bushra but didn’t hear her voice. I heard my son Yusef’s voice for a moment, and then I didn’t hear him anymore.

The doctors decided to amputate my leg. They said otherwise I would develop sepsis and could die. They also discovered my blood sugar was not balanced, which was probably why I was thirsty all the time. They operated on me again, and when I woke up, I didn’t have a leg. It was a terrible feeling, I can’t describe it. After the amputation, the nurses changed my bandages every day, without anesthesia because there were no anesthetics. I screamed in pain

My face was blue and my whole body was swollen. I was in very bad pain and felt as if my right hand and leg were cut off. I was taken by ambulance to Abu Yusef a-Najar Hospital in Rafah, and all the way I called for my children and told them my children were under the rubble. When I got to the hospital, I found my brothers there and asked again and again about my children. Everyone told me the children were alive and would be rescued just as I was. Only later that day did they tell me that my husband, my children, my brothers-in-law Shadi and Ousamah, and Ousamah’s family, all were killed.

Maram was killed about ten days after her baby and was buried without us being able to say goodbye to her. She got married about a year and a half before the war. She was a business management graduate, and she worked in the field. She was a vivacious person, with a sweet temper and a beautiful laugh. When Yumana was born, she was so happy.

It was nighttime. They loaded us onto an armored personnel carrier (APC). They tied our feet, too, but didn’t cover our eyes. The zip ties hurt me a lot. They took us to a building with soldiers in it. I think it was still in Khan Yunis. They covered my eyes with a piece of cloth, and I heard them ordering the young men to strip down. Then they hit me with a rifle on my neck and head, and hit the young men, too – I heard them shouting in pain.

I felt paralyzed. Later, I found out that I was hit by one bullet in the neck and another in the back. [My sister] Mahasen tried again and again to drag me away. After half an hour, my daughter Malak showed up with a white flag. She also tried to shield me with her body. Then my cousin Fatimah, also came there with a white flag.

The hospital care was very limited, but thankfully, the birth was easy and I went home the same day. Taymaa was born small, weighing less than three kilos. I had nothing to eat after the birth, and I didn’t have enough milk to breastfeed her. I couldn’t find formula to supplement her diet. I was very afraid for her.

I grabbed my father by the legs and dragged him with great difficulty out of the line of fire. He was hit by three bullets: one in the chest, one in the stomach, and the third, which caused the worst injury, was in the left hip. His intestines were exposed. I got a clean piece of cloth and put it on the wound. He told me to leave him, as if he knew he was going to die and there was no way to save him.

I also wondered why they arrested me. Why are they still holding me? What will happen to me here? When will they let me go? I thought about my difficult situation, especially the darkness I was drowning in under the blindfold without seeing anything, about the fierce cold and the strong wind. I was freezing all the time, and hungry and thirsty.

My husband was a vegetable vendor and once in a while he managed to sell some vegetables, and that's how we made a living. On 2 November 2023, my husband went out with his cousin Zaki a-Rifi and some others to try and sell vegetables so we could buy necessities, especially diapers for Maher. I tried to persuade him not to go because I was afraid, there were bombings around us all the time. But he insisted and said they were civilians that weren’t endangering anyone. Zaki came back after 20 minutes, badly injured in his hand, and said my husband was killed.

I was put in a pit in the ground. When I was in it, with all the other detainees, the soldiers ordered me to take off my hijab. One of them told me: “I killed your husband and I want to bury you alive. Let the dogs eat you.” About half an hour later, they took us out of the pit and put us on a truck. There were men inside who were right up against me. At that point, I thought my husband had been killed. After I was released, I saw a photo they took of us in the truck. I’m in that photo.

I was taken to an iron cage where I stayed with other female detainees for 11 days. My hands were in zip ties the whole time. We were given very little food. I barely even ate that so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, which was far away and didn’t have a tap. If you were menstruating, you got one pad. In the bathroom, we helped each other. There was no shower, either. There were male and female soldiers around us all the time, and they wouldn’t let us sleep. They would turn on the light, turn on speakers, eat in front of us and swear at us.

We were taken out of the cage and dragged to a bus, like animals. The bus started driving and the whole way, the female soldiers guarding us wouldn’t let us lift our heads. They swore at us, hit us on our hands and took pictures of us. After some time, the bus stopped. We were taken off it and each asked our name and photographed. A female soldier grabbed us by the head and ordered us to kiss the Israeli flag. Another female soldier bashed my head against the side of the bus.

There are nine of us in the tent, without water, electricity, medications, and almost no food. Life here feels like a disaster. We’re living in the desert, in conditions unfit for human habitation. It’s hard to get potable water or even water for cleaning. There is no way to bathe, and we don’t do laundry either. We’re very cold because we have no warm clothes. There are insects everywhere here - mosquitoes and flies, and reptiles too. We’ve all lost a lot of weight and feel weak and exhausted all the time. We barely sleep at night.

Relatives told me the Israeli military had invaded a-Zeitoun, where my husband was staying. They said he went to stay with his uncle Samir and that soldiers entered the house and arrested Samir, seven of his sons and my husband. Until yesterday, I hadn't heard any news from Shadi. Then, one of his cousins, Jawad, 17, who was arrested and released yesterday, called me. He told me that on the day of the arrest, the soldiers took all the men out of the house and ordered them to strip, and told all the women to go south. He told me that they tied the hands of all the men behind their backs, blindfolded them with bits of cloth, beat them, and poured cold water on them. Shadi was still injured, and Jawad said the soldiers beat him, too.

I lost my cousins and my neighbor, all of them my friends, just to get some flour and canned goods after months of starving. The hunger here is real and extreme, and we have no other way to get food. We go there and risk our lives because it's the only option, but when you go, you don't know if you'll come back. Now I don't know if I'm capable of going there again. On the other hand, when the flour runs out at home, I won't have any choice, despite the danger

I was on the balcony with my two grandchildren, Julia and Majd. The rest of the family were inside, getting ready for lunch. Suddenly, I felt my body flying through the air, and then I fell on the floor. Julia and Majd crashed to the floor, too, and there was dust and debris everywhere. There was a lot of smoke too, and I could smell fire. My shoulder felt dislocated, and I couldn’t move or get up on my feet. Then I started feeling like the building was collapsing underneath me, until the third floor became the first floor.

We buried Yazan that day in the cemetery here in Rafah. Losing him is terrible. I look at the mattress he slept on until he was hospitalized, and all I can feel is grief and deep sorrow. I always tried to give Yazan everything he needed and take care of him, but the conditions here are so difficult now that I had nothing to give him any more. The deadly hunger here killed him.

Alma talks about her family non-stop, about her brothers and sister. She talks about how she saw her brother under the rubble. She keeps asking to go back there to look for her family members under the rubble. We told her there was nothing to go back to. I even took her to a place where you can see the northern Gaza Strip from far away, so she would see the destruction and understand that it’s impossible to go back there right now.

We took the rubble off the bodies by hand. We did all the work with our hands and with the help of some light equipment. In the end, we managed to get out the bodies of Muhammad, my wife Islam, my father, my two sisters and my aunt. I did it emotionlessly. I can’t feel anything anymore, and that made it possible for me to get them all out. After that, I buried them next to each other in al-Falujah cemetery in Jabalya R.C.